Here are some fresh screenshots of the first river in progress - in the first I cranked up the number of trees just to see how the system can handle the quantity. The others just give you a sense of the landscape:http://www.pishtech.com/pvrs_river.php

I've got the waterfall functioning (it moves like it should) but now I'm working on making it look decent. I'm trying to build a better texture for it, and I'm experimenting with drawing it in layers.

Another thing I've decided I want to do in one of these updates is VLOD - variable level of detail in the actors. The people have a pretty high polygon count. When I create the new customizable person I plan to make it even higher, so hopefully people will look better when you see them up close. But for viewing at greater distances I'll make low-polygon versions, down to one with just a few dozen polys. A person with so few polygons looks awful up close, but from a couple hundred yards it looks fine and it takes much less time to render, so that will speed things up. I'm thinking of making high through low poly versions of trees, bushes, logs, etc. I think the time I can save by speeding up the drawing of the distant stuff will allow me to crank up the detail on the close stuff and if it's done right it's pretty seemless.

As of now I've got the trees, rocks, etc. fading out of view as they get near the limit of your drawing distance, and that's automatically calculated based on the size of the object. It's subtle and you may not notice it happening to rocks and logs unless you watch for it, but it's another method of rendering more detail in your immediate surroundings than at greater distances. So a 1 foot rock may fade away 500 feet from you while a big pine tree may not fade until 2000 feet, etc.

For this first beta release there won't be any of the new species yet - just rainbow trout in this river. The good news is most of the work I'm doing will benefit every future body of water. Basically I'm enhancing the game engine and the tools. When this is done it won't take long at all to create each new body of water. For example I can erase all the objects from the new map, manually add the dam, use patterns to add a few thousand trees, rocks, boulders, logs, etc., all in about 10 minutes. Applying all this to the existing lakes will go quickly.

OK - it's after 1 AM. A couple more modifications to the waterfall and I've got to get some sleep.

I'm still hoping to upload something tonight - it's been a long week and some things that should have gone easily got complicated - always seems to happen. Right now I'm finishing up some map issues. There are some ghost boulders - they're in the data used for detecting collisions, but nowhere else. I'm trying to clean up the data automatically rather than remapping all the scenery objects.

You're right about the waterfall - making it look just right is going to be tough. I'm going to leave it as I have it for the first beta and try to improve it in another round.

I've got a few more must-fix issues, and I'm hoping I can get them dealt with by midnight or so. If I can I'll start the upload.

The beta is uploading. Hopefully it will be done by the time I'm done typing this - if not, it will be available within a few minutes.

Huge warning: There are lots of things yet to do. Here's a partial list of current issues, all of which I plan to fix:

While walking on some surfaces the camera may get jittery. It's better in first person, but in "auto" it may bounce around when walking over uneven ground. I'll smooth that out in the next update.Only parts of the boat detect collisions, so you might partially overlap a log or boulder and even get stuck there. Rod control isn't as good as it should be yet. Right click to switch mouse-look on and off. Once you have line out the mouse won't move the camera but will move the rod by twisting your body. I'm going to experiment with using keys to switch the mouse between pointer, rod and camera control.Fish AI - It's still fairly rough in some situations in the moving water, but it's really coming along. Find an area with an appropriate level of current for the conditions and you'll find some fish, though. Nightcrawlers and spinners work great on the rainbows.The fishing guide- the advice should be accurate as far as fish activity, spawning, etc., but it doesn't yet talk about current, or river-type structures.Walking limits - You can currently walk to the edge of the world. There will be limits in the future to keep you in the areas you're supposed to see, like not getting near the river upstream of the waterfall.Sound - There's no sound for the flowing water or even the waterfall yet. That's coming, along with wading sounds.Oh yeah, and waders. Right now wading requires wetting your pants.

I think that's most of it.

For those inclined to play with the new editing system, sign in as "lake tester" and you'll see some new buttons. You can manually add an object or add any number either to the whole map or to within a certain distance of your current location. There are some bugs in that system yet, and when all is said and done I'll try to make it more user friendly, but it's fun to play around with. I spent a lot of the day chasing down those ghost boulders. They're fixed now.

OK, it's creeping up on 2 AM here. I didn't quite it make my Saturday goal, but the upload is done now. Consider it very much a work in progress, but if you want to try out the river you're welcome to do that.